CopperMuse voted Best Distillery

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We are honored to be named Best Distillery in Lydia's Style Magazine / 2016 Best Of Issue! Thank you to all who voted. The list of Best Of picks starts on page 29.

Congratulations also to the other Best Of Winners including: Horse & Dragon Brewing Company, William Oliver's Publick House, Sonny Lubick Steakhouse, Silver Grill Cafe, Social, Equinox Brewing, New Belgium Brewing, Wilbur's Total Beverage and many more...

CopperMuse Wins 2 Gold Medals at 2014 Breckenridge Craft Spirits Festival

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http://www.summitdaily.com/news/13578678-113/distillery-spirits-gin-breckenridge

I finally found the link to the news story about the 2014 Breckenridge Craft Spirits Festival, Still on the Hill. CopperMuse was awarded two Gold Medals for our Vertueux Vodka and Gold Rum. Congratulations to all the Craft Distillers for such an awesome event and world-class libations.

Highlights:

The spirits were judged in a double-blind taste test by a panel of industry experts: Tom Fischer, host and producer of BourbonBlog; Nancy Fraley, writer and organoleptic analysis expert; and Eric Watson, international beverage consultant.

The panel bestowed six gold and 15 silver judgments.

The awards were based on the quality of each spirit with regard to taste, smell, integrity and smoothness and not as a ranking of spirits against one another.

“This format of judging helps raise the quality of the emerging craft spirits industry as a whole because our products are being judged on their intrinsic merit,” said Jordan Via, master distiller at Breckenridge Distillery.

2014 “Judgment on the Hill” Spirits Awards

Gold

• 808 Distillery Leo’s Limoncello

• CopperMuse Gold Rum

• CopperMuse Vertueux Vodka

• J & L Distillery FYR Cinnamon Liqueur

• Roundhouse Gin

• Snova Vodka

 

Silver

• Black Canyon Distillery Mayhem Creek Pepper Vodka

• Bone Spirits Moody June American Dry Gin

• Distillery 291 Aspen Stave Rye

• Golden Moon Distillery Dry Curacao

• J & L Distillery Sno Gin

• Mile High Spirits Cuidado Tequila

• Mile High Spirits Denver Dry Gin

• Roundhouse Spirits Imperial Barrel Aged Gin

• Santa Fe Spirits Wheeler’s Gin

• Spirit Hound Distillers’ Gin

• Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey

• Wood’s High Mountain Distillery Tenderfoot Whiskey

• Woody Creek Stobrawa Reserve Vodka

• Woody Creek Vodka

• Wyoming Whiskey

 

 

Opening date is set - Friday, April 4th, 11am to 10pm

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We are happy to announce that we are finally ready to open our doors beginning this Friday, April 4th from 11am to 10pm. Come sample some of our delicious craft-cocktails and tapas.

We’ll also have bottles of our Brightside™ Vodka for sale. Get these while you can as we are only producing 500 of them.

Hope to see you soon and share with you our liquid inspirations!

Tasting Room Hours of Operation starting 4/4/14:

            Mon-Tues:    Closed

            Wed-Thurs:   4pm to 9 pm

            Fri-Sat:          11am to 10pm

            Sun:              11am to 6pm

 

Light at the End of the Bureaucracy

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I’m happy to report that we’ve jumped through the last remaining hoops keeping us from opening our doors to the public.

·         Distilled Spirits Plant Permit – check!

·         Label approval – check!   (well, at least for our vodka product…Silver & Gold Rums and Black Vodka label approvals still in the queue)

·         Poudre Fire Authority – check!

·         City of Fort Collins – check!

·         Larimer County Retail Food Inspection – check!

·         Distill and produce initial inventory of spirits – check!

·         Interview and hire an awesome staff – check!

·         Finalize our food and cocktail menus – check!

We plan to open our doors beginning Wednesday, April 2nd provided our final preparations go as planned. We can’t wait to see you there and share with you our passion for hand-crafted spirits, cocktails and food.

When are you going to open?

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I never thought that this question would become so difficult to hear. Don’t get me wrong. I am thrilled that so many people are excited for CopperMuse™ to open its doors and be able to sell our inspired libations.

Ay, but here’s the rub. The journey to opening a craft distillery is a long one. It is fraught with many ups and downs as one might expect. I personally spend much of my time planning, scheduling, troubleshooting and pushing my Sisyphus-like rock up the hill. What truly makes the question so frustrating is that there are still so many elements outside of my control.

A key one being the glacial nature of the Federal government in approving Distilled Spirits Plant (DSP) permits. Before you can even begin to submit an application for a permit, you are required to purchase all your key distilling equipment (stills, fermenters, brew kettles, etc.), have a property under your business control (own or lease), have a detailed architectural plan of your entire operations, purchase a surety bond to protect the government’s excise taxes on product that doesn’t even exist yet, and compile a lengthy history of financial and personal background information. Then and only then can you submit your application for your DSP. Talk about putting a cart before the horse. Think of all the effort and money that goes into this and you don’t even know if you’ll be graced with a DSP permit at the very end of it. Leap of Faith for sure!

The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB for short) rolled out a much improved online permit application system this past year. While this tool is a significant improvement over the past system of literally putting together a binder of information and mailing it off, it doesn’t do squat for the fact that “average” number of days to process a DSP application is running over 110 days and climbing. And this cycle time doesn’t even factor in the lovely government shutdown back in October!

I submitted my DSP application on August 12th. That would put my permit acceptance right around the end of November according to "averages". But alas, no permit is in hand. To top things off, you must get label approvals for any products you plan to produce. TTB cycle times for Distilled Spirit labels are currently running 75 days. Yes, 75 days! And you can’t submit any labels for approval until you have your DSP in hand. If you are thinking of creating a unique spirit that strays just a bit from standard spirit types (vodka, rum, gin, brandy, bourbon, etc.), you better also plan on getting your formulation approval prior to your label approval. Those are running 38 days as we speak.

So when am I going to open for business? I really wish I could say for sure. Construction at CopperMuse™ Distillery will be wrapping up just before the Christmas holiday. All I can tell you is that I’m putting in a special request with the big man this year. All I want for Christmas is my DSP.